In addition to getting an ad-free version of the show and bonus segments on the interview episodes, I'm also going to occasionally drop some bonus content into the feed. And today, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is coming up on September 19, I want to tell you about the origin of the word "scallywag" because, believe it or not, it's related to Shetland ponies.
In addition to getting an ad-free version of the show and bonus segments on the interview episodes, I'm also going to occasionally drop some bonus content into the feed. And today, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is coming up on September 19, I want to tell you about the origin of the word "scallywag" because, believe it or not, it's related to Shetland ponies.
Greetings Grammarpaloozians!
In addition to getting an ad-free version of the show and bonus segments on the interview episodes, I'm also going to occasionally drop some bonus content into the feed. And today, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is coming up on September 19, I want to tell you about the origin of the word "scallywag" because, believe it or not, it's related to Shetland ponies.
First, although I think of "scallywag" as a pirate term, it actually isn't. Or at least it wasn't in the Golden Age of Pirates from the 1650s to the 1730s when Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, and Captain Kidd terrorized the seas. "Scallywag" is actually an Americanism that only became a word in 1839 according to Etymonline, which makes it more like "roughneck" and "loon," which are words that emerged as American colloquialisms around the same time.
A roughneck was a rowdy troublemaker, and a loon was someone who was a lunatic — foolish, unintelligent, irrational, or out of touch. That word comes from the ancient idea that people who aren't mentally well are under the influence of the moon or the moon's phases. It's the same root that gives us the word "lunar" for things that are related to the moon, as in the "lunar landing."
But a scallywag is a good-for-nothing, "a man who won't work," according to the OED.
But here's the fun part: although the origin is ultimately unknown, one story is that it goes back to the group of Shetland Islands in Scotland, which is also where Shetland ponies originated. Apparently, people were keeping small work horses there as far back as the Bronze Age. The Scottish people called rustic farm servants "scallags" after Scalloway, which is one of those Shetland islands. "Scallag" might have been combined with "wag," meaning a habitual joker, to give us "scallywag" to refer to a bad person. But it's a little confusing because another early use was to describe a scrawny worthless animal and could just come from the place name, Scalloway.
But either way, presumably Scottish immigrants brought the word to America where it was first recorded to mean a bad guy.
Then, for a period during the U.S. Civil War and after, a scallywag was a specific kind of bad guy in the Confederacy. They used it as a derogatory term for white Southerners who supported Reconstruction.
But never fear! You can still have fun with this word on Talk Like a Pirate Day because despite its non-pirating origins, "scallywag" does appear in many modern pirate stories. You'll find it in "Pirates of the Caribbean" where Jack Sparrow talks about keeping the "scallywags at bay," and a quick search of Google Books turns up a bunch of pirate-themed children's books such as "Scallywag on the Salish Sea," "Princess Scallywag and the No-Good Pirates," and "The Scallywags of Nobody's Island."
I'm Mignon Fogarty. Thanks for supporting the show, and don't let the scallywags get you down.